□■□ One of Jarmusch's Funniest and Most Touching Films...

Long Single Take Scenes That Feature Superb Acting.. A tale of 5 cities... As with many of Jarmusch's films ("Coffee & Cigarettes", "Ghost Dog", Down by Law, etc.), "Night on Earth" is simultaneously endearing and mindboggling. The film centers around five short cab rides in five international cities in a single night. From a lurid confession in a Roman cab (with Roberto Begnini) to an impromptu audition in LA (with Gena Rowlands and Winona Ryder) to a hysterical ride through New York with a retired East German clown (Armin Mueller-Stahl), this film will keep you laughing, crying, and thinking so deeply, that all you want to do is rewind and watch this night again. Jim Jarmusch's film, "Night on Earth ", has that feeling about it a person gets driving around the town they know at three in the morning. The streets are bare and you feel like you are the only one to experience this. It is the emptiness and that holds you in wonder, the silence that keeps your attention. "Night on Earth " seems to work in much the same way (and not just because there are stories of driving through empty cities at night ). We are presented with five stories that form no large conclusions together, but present characters and vignettes of the world that attract us in their silence. It presents a world at three in the morning. "Night on Earth " is a movie which works as a collection self-contained short stories. It starts off with a simple scene, and a simple concept. A camera shows us a wall with five clocks, representing the time in five different cities; Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. The camera zooms onto one clock, and tells us the story of a twenty minute cab ride in that city. Then, the time is run back, and we are given the same twenty minutes in a different cab in a different city. My favorite is, however, the Rome vignette, starring Bennini as a crazy Roman cabby who drives with sunglasses in the dark. You should at least rent this film if you don't decide to buy it, but I feel a personal need to own this film. In the end, nothing has really happened, but we can see the subtle change in the characters that has made the difference. 【Winona Ryder】Night on Earth【Gena Rowlands】 On balance, I really liked this film: Five little vignettes, all at the same time, all in different countries, all involving conversations in taxicabs. It starts off well with Winona Ryder as a young, strangely confident cabbie who drives a middle-aged talent scout to her Beverly Hills home. An interesting dialog develops during the ride, thus leading to an even more interesting climax at the vignette's end. Each vignette is entirely self-contained, and wholly different in form and scope from the other four. From Los Angeles to New York to Paris to Rome to Helsinki, the purity of the conversations envelop the viewer.. The film works almost entirely off one hinge; characterization.. The camera rarely even leaves the cabs, except for a few scenes (the most notable on being the final scene), so the film seems to trap itself to only be able to draw its characters.. And this is does, and does very well.... It also does paint the locale of each of the stories, but this also is done entirely through characterization. And when we feel we have been well introduced to the characters, we must reluctantly leave them to go onto the next story. The film works on a pleasant level, and each simple story is a pleasure to watch. Personally, I found Roberto Benigni's scene to be quite overdone. It was the only one of the five that I didn't enjoy. While amusing in its own right, it was a bit too much of a Benigni-barrage to keep my attention. After a while, I just got sick of listening to him drone on and on and on. Jarmusch could've centered on one particular city (as he did in Mystery Train) and then tried to connect them all in the end. He didn't. This is why I feel the film is successful. Rather than tying all the stories together in plot, it causes the viewer to try and metaphorically connect the events and characters together. The result is a Gr8 hour and half of film. Each one of these stories has a very distinct and unique atmosphere, ranging from comedy to drama, and revealing, often, the different mentalities of the different countries; the humanity, though, runs all the way through. All of Jarmusch's characters are different and yet the same; they are all equally human, and he understands them all, but each one on their own terms. Jarmusch's observation is always brutally frank and sincere, and always loving and forgiving, for all of his characters equally. Night On Earth is sometimes sad, often funny, mostly touching and always beautiful. There may not be much going on, but it never fails to fascinate. I do agree with critics whom say that some of the stories seem to move faster than others. The Paris short is probably the weakest link. There are a ton of gr8 performances in this film. Armaud-Stahl and Giancarlo Espisito are magical together. They interact wonderfully on screen as two New Yorkers with bizaare first names. Roberto Bernigni(sp) is fabulous as an italian driver who has an in-cab confession. The last segment in Helsinki is a story of co-workers, after their night on the town, they ride with a colleague who got fired and all he has is his severance pay... His buddies share his sad story, but the driver tops them in his story of his wife and their dead baby .... Sad.....